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A Man, a Blouse and an Awesome Customer Experience

I found it today when I ran out to do an errand for my wife — a day late as usual.

Husband duty this time involved bringing a blouse/top/wrap (whatever you call those things — I usually go with "shirt") to the local tailor.

Quick Turnaround Needed

Newly purchased through the mail — an industry my wife has kept in business since the advent of online shopping — it had tear in the seam. Happy Wife equals … you get the point.

Essentially, there's not enough time to send the thing back through mail and get a new one in time for the event at which my wife wants to wear it.

So, better get it done.

The local tailor for us is Guy's Tailoring on Humphrey Street in Swampscott, Mass., a cozy, quaint throwback to the days where local craftsmen and craftswomen honed their skills and produced artistry for their friends and neighbors.

It's owned by the always-smiling Guy Fusco, 59, who came to America in 1972 from Mondragone ce, Italy, and has practiced his craft since. He's owned his own shop since 1992.

"She's sending me back to you," I told him.

"Ah," he said in an accent so thick you can't help but visualize pasta dough and twirling. "Let-a-me-a take a look-a."

Guy grabbed the shirt from me, lay it on his counter and then spotted the tear. Without saying a word, he grabbed the shirt and brought it to his sewing machine.

"Wait, I don't have any cash on me," I said.

No Cash, No Problem

"Not-a-worry," Guy said. "Stop it. Stop it. No worry."

And promptly, Guy sat down, inserted the shirt into his sewing machine, stitched the tear and handed the shirt back to me.

Guy has no marketing automation software. No collaboration tools. No SharePoint to manage information. He doesn't have a Facebook or Twitter account for his business.

He's an operation of one. But he's got as great of a sense of good customer experience as any Fortune 500 company. He doesn't need one of the leading platforms to pull it off.

Give just a little customer experience and service, and you'll get a lifetime of support back. I'm living proof. It took Guy 30 seconds to sew my wife's shirt, and here I am so impressed I'm penning an article about it. I'm in. Lifetime customer, no doubt.

Guy has one review on Yelp that speaks to his efforts:

Guy is a friendly tailor who is extremely good at his craft. His warm welcome, attention to detail, quick turnaround time and affordable pricing brings me back time and again whenever I have to hem dress pants, dresses, jeans etc. I know my clothes are in good hands with Guy!"

I laugh when I think of Guy's approach to business versus the insurance company that's making me file basically a Warren Report's worth of data to prove I legitimately had to cancel a flight. Or the coffee shop owner who actually kicked me and my son out of a virtually empty shop because I had gone over the one-hour wireless limit.

Don't be a stickler for company policy and bottom lines. Be a stickler for customer happiness.

I asked Guy what he would want people to say when they leave his shop.

"They gotta say I make them feel-a at home when they come in," he told me. "I'm so nice to them, and, you know, I mean, everybody's happy when they be outta here and talk with the others."

Endangered Species: The Corporate Intranetview commentsThe very idea that we’re still doing old-fashioned, browser-based, news-publishing intranets in the mobile era is downright antiquated. They’re no different than rotary-dial phones. And they’re going the same direction...

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Endangered Species: The Corporate Intranetview commentsThe very idea that we’re still doing old-fashioned, browser-based, news-publishing intranets in the mobile era is downright antiquated. They’re no different than rotary-dial phones. And they’re going the same direction...